Tag Archives: The Coen Brothers

I’m an admirer of all the principals involved, so it brings me no joy to report to you that Suburbicon—cowriter/director George Clooney’s deeply misguided retread of a Coen Bros. script from 30 years ago—is the biggest embarrassment to Hollywood’s liberal piety since Crash. At least Oscar Issac is having a good time.

Logan Lucky,Steven Soderbergh’s return to features after a four-year “retirement” in prestige TV, is a lot of fun, though I’m not as high on it as some. I have the same reservations about it that I do about the Coen Brothers films it most readily recalls. Anyway, here’s my review.

No one in the world can possibly appreciate the way the narrator of the new Coen Brothers picture, Sir Michael Gambon — the man who once declined the role of James Bond because, quoth he, “I’ve got tits like a woman” — says “in westerly Malibu” as much as I do. But just about everyone seems to like the movie. I do, too. My NPR review is here.

“Radical Decency” might be a fancy new name for the old-timey philosophy governing Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg’s earnest, burnished, thoroughly gripping account of a notable episode of Cold War diplomacy. Compressing events that unfolded between 1957 and 1962, the film is primarily about the relationship between Manhattan insurance lawyer James B. Donovan and Rudolf Abel, néeCol. Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher, the Soviet spy he was court-appointed to represent.

Though reluctant to accept Abel’s case, Donovan defends his client with more zeal than anybody, including the judge, wants, on the grounds that it’s the only way to show the world that innocent-until-proven-guilty American justice is superior to its totalitarian Soviet counterpart. Though unable to persuade a jury of Abel’s innocence, Donovan convinces the judge to spare his life—leaving the U.S. with a bargaining chip when C.I.A. pilot Francis Gary Powers’ top-secret U-2 spyplane is shot down over Soviet territory and Powers is captured three years later. Appreciating that Donovan foresaw the need for a captive to trade, the C.I.A. dispatches him to freshly walled-off East Berlin to try to negotiate Powers’ release in exchange for Abel. Continue reading →